The rise of the paranoiac simpletons appears to be a cyclical, oscillating occurrence over historical time-scales. We seem to have agreed, unspoken or by proxy to periodically hand over the steering wheel of civilisation to these selfish fools. Perhaps it is an autonomous process of homeostasis and systemic auto-balance in which the world unwittingly inflicts great cruelty and ignorance upon itself as part of an unfurling pattern of purpose or longer-term utilitarian benefit and creative growth that we (as part of this system) can not directly perceive. Or perhaps there is just something about the way the world functions that at base biases privilege to tyrants and impostors.

Of course, we may also just have been exquisitely unlucky in our shared selections from a poverty of all available choices…